For Terry Zwigoff -- the San Francisco film maker who spent nine years making "Crumb," and was frequently told that nobody would pay to see a movie about an anti-social artist and his bizarre family -- last week should have been payoff time.

SUCCESS STORY

And yet, Zwigoff, whose next project is a film biography of Woody Allen, says he's dissatisfied. That's because "Crumb" was snubbed last year by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences -- after qualifying with a New York Film Festival showing in September 1994 -- and is therefore ineligible for reconsideration by the Academy's documentary selection committee.

When the committee screened "Crumb" last fall, Zwigoff said, "They shut it off after 20 minutes." That was the same committee that failed to nominate "Hoop Dreams," and instead awarded the Oscar to "Maya Lin: A Strong, Clear Vision," a film by the com mittee's former chairperson, Freida Lee Mock.

ACADEMY DISMISSAL

Zwigoff is angry about the Academy's dismissal of his film. Given the awards that "Crumb" is winning, its popular success ($3.5 million in box-office returns) and its inevitable placement on several Top 10 lists, he thinks the Academy should reconsider it for 1995. Reconsideration is justified, he thinks, by a recent change in the rules for nominating documentaries.

In the wake of the "Hoop Dreams" and "Crumb" snubs, Academy President Arthur Hiller acknowledged problems with the documentary category and promised to take a "close, hard look" at the voting procedures.

On June 27, after a three- month review, the Academy introduced revisions in the documentary committee's procedures. Films can no longer be shut off mid- stream, film festivals are no longer qualifying venues for Oscar consideration, and a new committee to be set up in New York will share the workload with Los Angeles committee members.

But despite the new rule re quiring full viewings of nomination candidates, the Academy has refused to give "Crumb" a second shot at Oscar. "It was last year's film," said John Pavlik, the Academy's communications director. "Once it's been considered it can't be reconsidered the following year, simply because other people thought it should have been select- ed -- or for any other reason."

"We've done everything that could possibly be done," Barker said. "Terry has also made requests. But the Academy feels the film was in consideration last year, and that's it."

So why didn't the committee members finish looking at "Crumb" last year? "I don't know," Pavlik said. "That was a procedure the committee used until this year. It was a democratic vote. You have a group of people sitting in a room and if the majority chooses not to finish looking at a film, either at 20 minutes or 40 minutes, it was turned off. Nobody asks why."

Regardless, Zwigoff thinks the Academy's rules revisions are mostly worthless. By eliminating the film festival option, he says, and requiring documentary makers to book a one-week run in Los Angeles and New York, the Academy penalizes film makers who live outside those two cities and can't afford to rent a theater.

The real problem, he said, is a committee, comprised of volunteers, many of whom are retired film professionals, that perennially makes bad choices. "That's the big issue: They should throw those guys out of there.

"Basically, you get what you pay for," Zwigoff said. "If they can't find enough qualified volunteers to sit through all the documentary films every year, then they should pay people. The Academy should cut out one of those horrible musical numbers, take the budget from that, and pay a number of film critics or qualified people who can make a worthy decision."

Instead of begging the Academy to look at his film again, he's decided, "I'd be happy to exert enough influence to make the documentary committee uphold a higher standard."